Amid all the drama over Edward Snowden‘s flight from "justice" –
the media stakeout at a Moscow airport, the smear campaign aimed not only at
Snowden but at Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who broke the PRISM/eavesdroppingstory, and the obsessive media focus on Snowden as a personality – the really
interesting aspect of all this is how it will impact our politics.

This is what made the Sunday talk shows illuminating, for a change – aside
from the fact that neither John McCain nor Lindsey Graham was to be seen or
heard that morning. While Greenwald’s appearance on "Meet the Press,"
and his priceless smackdown of regimist spokesman David Gregory, has gotten
all the attention, that same day over at ABC, George Stephanopoulos was giving
the neocons their turn at bat in the person of Dan Senor, former spokesman for
George W. Bush and now a big wazoo over a the Foreign Policy Initiative, successor
to Bill Kristol’s infamous Project for a New American Century.

It was a cozy little Sunday morning coffee klatch, with ABC foreign affairs
correspondent Martha Raddazt – she who was so helpful to then-candidate Biden
during the last vice presidential debates – commiserating with Council on Foreign
Relations mandarin Richard Hass and Senor over the alleged damage done to the
US by the revelations. While Haas was furious over what he characterized as
Beijing’s grasping of a "short-term gain" at the expense of China’s longterm
developing relationship with the US, Senor’s focus was on the domestic political
consequences of the Snowden affair, and he was decidedly more optimistic about
the benefits accrued to the Regimist cause:

"Snowden’s, you know, interviews that he gave, and documents he released
to the Chinese press, obviously puts us in a very uncomfortable position. But
I think domestically, the U.S., I think this further strengthens the center
on national security. I think there was a real risk over the last couple weeks
that there would be this left/right coalition that would backlash against the
United States government, sort of libertarian uprising. And I think Snowden
just traveling around the world, flying to these anti-American capitals, behaving
the way he’s doing further strengthens–I think the center is holding right now
in the US, and I think that’s a positive development."

A "libertarian uprising" is the neocons’ worst nightmare because
it would put an end to their empire-building project and the Surveillance State
they’ve been advocating all along. It would also put an end to their control
of the GOP – their only route to power. Their paranoia in this regard is justified:
many conservatives, faced with the imminent bankruptcy of the country they love,
are in open rebellion against the horrifically costly foreign policy of global
intervention. The neocons’ worst case scenario: Sen. Rand Paul captures the
GOP presidential nomination in 2016 by fusing a rising libertarian Republican
movement with independent and younger voters – and then going on to duplicate
his victory in November.

The Establishment liberals and "centrists" have their own reasons
for fearing the Great Libertarian Uprising: like the neocons, the left-Regimists over at MSNBC and the Washington-based nest of Soros-funded "progressive"
institutions, have good reason to loathe libertarianism in all its various manifestations,
whether it be on the right or the left. In opposing what the late libertarian
theorist Murray Rothbard dubbed the "welfare-warfare state," an organized
and growing libertarian movement poses a deadly threat to the "centrist"
non-aggression pact represented in that ABC panel of "experts." While
sparring over the details, the two parties have basically agreed not to seriously
threaten the perks, privileges, and highly profitable projects of the other.
In Dan Senor’s world, the "center" consists of those who have agreed
to disagree on domestic policy but are united in their unconditional support
for the Empire – a foreign policy of endless international meddling and perpetual
war.

And since perpetual war means a perpetual state of emergency inside the US,
Senor’s "centrists" are on the same page in their support for a system of all-pervasive government surveillance – a useful tool politically, if of doubtful value in
actually preventing terrorist attacks. This is why we see Establishment politicians of the left and the right unanimous in their condemnation of Snowden’s actions,
and as far as Senor is concerned this means the "centrist" nonaggression
pact is holding.

In the darkest days of the post-9/11 war hysteria, when the air was thick with
accusations of "treason" aimed at those who dared stand up to the
War Party, Lew Rockwell coined a very useful phrase: Red-State Fascism. He used
it to describe the mindless, frenzied ultra-nationalism and militarism that
energized "movement" conservatives and Republicans in general in the
run up to the Iraq war, and which still persists (albeit in somewhat diluted
form) to this day. Recall the chants of "USA! USA!" that drowned out
any appeal to prudence and caution – the traditional hallmarks of the conservative
temperament – and paved the way for America’s post-9/11 rampage through much
of the Middle East. War.

The domestic program of Red-state fascism was a combination of the "national
greatness conservatism" conjured by David Brooks and the neoconservative
yearning for a police state. The latter was given full-throated expression by
David Frum and Richard Perle in their 2004 polemic, An End to Evil, which
precisely outlined the Panopticon then being assembled by the Bush administration.
The government, Frum and Perle wrote, must create dossiers on each and every
American, including "an individual’s credit history, his recent movements,
his immigration status and personal background, his age and sex, and a hundred
other pieces of information." Oh, and don’t worry about the danger that
this massive database will be used by unscrupulous government officials for
their own nefarious purposes, because "safeguards" will be built into
the system. In short: trust us, it’s for your own good and the security of the
country.

Now that the Bush era is over, however, and the "left" wing of the
"center" is in power, the defense of the Panopticon falls in the lap
of the Obama administration and its more fanatic supporters, who might fairly
be dubbed Blue-State fascists. These ideologues have taken to the airwaves and
the Internet to slime Snowden as a "traitor," the Emmanuel Goldstein of the Orwellian world their leaders have created.

The pushback coming from these quarters has a familiar ring to it: you’ll recall,
during the Bush era, when the President himself implied that dissenters from
his war policies were allies of the "terrorists," a view given full-throated
support in the conservative media and by ambitious social climbers like Andrew
Sullivan, who infamously denounced a treacherous bi-coastal "fifth column"
whose sympathies, he claimed, were with Osama bin Laden.

The subtext of this
narrative, which sometimes surfaced, was that anti-interventionists and other
seditious dissidents should be prosecuted and tried for "treason."
In the view of our Red-State fascists, dissent was nothing less than ideological
espionage, and the relentless propaganda of the War Party made constant attempts
to implicate the anti-interventionist movement in outright treason. Thus Sullivan
noted on his vile blog, in an item entitled "Fifth Column Watch," that someone who had authored a single article for Antiwar.com
had been arrested on charges of aiding a foreign terrorist entity (an arrest, I might add, which Reason magazine accurately portrayed as a highly dubious example of prosecutorial overreach).
There is not a doubt in my mind that
he hoped the editors of this web site would be next on Attorney General John
Ashcroft’s list.

This same prosecutorial zeal is now on full display, only this time it isn’t
just the neocons giving voice to it: it is "liberals" like David Gregory,
and the Robespierre-like Lawrence O’Donnell, whose show the other day was devoted
to implying Glenn Greenwald actively colluded with Snowden in procuring sensitive
documents from the NSA.

No sooner had the Obama administration described Fox News reporter James Rosen
as a "co-conspirator" along with a source who had related information
deemed classified as background on a rather innocuous story about North Korea, then
Regimist "journalists" began straining at the bit to try this novel
bit of legal theory out. Referencing the news that Snowden sought his job at
Booz-Allen-Hamilton – taking a pay cut – precisely in order to unveil the secret
surveillance apparatus, Joy Reid, pontificating on O’Donnell’s show, opined:

"This answers one of the questions that I had when Glenn Greenwald
tweeted that he began working with Snowden in February but Snowden only had
the job for three months, meaning he would have gotten the job let’s say in
May. So the question was, well, when he got the job, did the journalist Laura
Poitras and Glenn Greenwald know he was going to Booz Allen with the intention
of getting information and was he honest with them, did he tell them in February
I’ve got information that he didn’t yet have and then take the job in order
to obtain it?"

Reid’s draft indictment of Greenwald was demolished,
the next day, by Erik Wemple in the Washington Post, who pointed out
that the Guardian reporter and columnist didn’t even know Snowden’s name
until they met in Hong Kong. Reid’s amateur sleuthing on behalf of law enforcement
is just an extreme example of the Blue-State Fascism now eating away at what had
once been the heart of American liberalism – a commitment to a free and open
society where no one need fear raising their voice in protest. What fills the
hollow place where its heart used to be is the mindless cultism of Obama-worship,
the tribalist primitivism of identity politics, and a belief in the bigness
and all-pervasiveness of government that goes well beyond the traditional liberal
commitment to uplifting the needy.

These alleged "progressives" are pushing back against the Snowden
revelations by saying we ought to "have a conversation" about the
"balance between security and civil liberties" – their rhetoric is
clotted with such clichés. The proper answer to them is that there will
no "conversation" about the necessity or utility of the Bill of Rights,
because the Constitution is non-negotiable. I would no sooner have a "conversation"
about modifying or limiting the liberties of Americans than I would have a "dialogue"
with a robber intent on burgling my home. The surveillance methods now being
employed by our government, which is spying on us at our expense, are unconstitutional
and un-American, and they must end forthwith. On this issue, there can be no
conversation and no compromise.

The methods of the Blue-State fascists are police state methods: campaigns
of calumniation meant to discredit, demonize, and isolate anyone, like Greenwald,
who becomes a spokesman for the resistance to their sinister program. On Chris
Hayes’s MSNBC show, that same day, Greenwald made an appearance, but the network
that is the televised voice of Regimism couldn’t let his clear articulation
of the case against the Surveillance State stand unchallenged: Greenwald was
followed by a conversation between Hayes and one Goldie Taylor, who echoed David
Gregory’s disdainful dismissal of Greenwald as not really a journalist, opining
that "I don’t trust Greenwald" to give us all the facts. As this lightweight
Obama cultist slimed a guest who’s been on the show several nights running
– and is widely admired by American liberals – I thought I saw Hayes literally
blush with embarrassment. He hurriedly if rather vaguely distanced himself from
Goldie’s outburst, and moved on.

When I noted Goldie’s reckless smear on Twitter, she was quick to respond.
In dissing her as a "nonentity" in comparison to Greenwald, she complained,
I was exhibiting my "privilege" – presumably meaning white-skin privilege.
This is what defenders of the Obama regime are reduced to: hurling the charge
of "racism" at the Big O’s critics, and anyone who ruffles their precarious personal dignity.

Upon making this pronouncement, Goldie blocked me and fled – but not without
leaving a wet trail in her wake. My Twitter account was subsequently deluged
with tweets from her monosyllabic fan club, which mostly consisted of imaginative
descriptions of my mother’s career path as well as such subtle put-downs as
"Snowden is a traitor jus [sic] like u" and "Yo Momma!"
This continued for a couple of hours, and was noted by my Twitter followers
with the contempt it deserved.

These are the people who think they are qualified – destined even – to rule
us, to peek into our email accounts and rifle through our private affairs. Having
already rationalized away the Bill of Rights, the Blue-State fascists are openly
calling for the criminalization of investigative journalism, alongside their
fulsome support for universal surveillance. This is something even the worst
neocons avoided during their heyday, for fear of showing their hand too soon.
Now we see their "liberal" equivalents going a few steps further down
that road into openly authoritarian territory.

This hideous inversion of what used to be American liberalism has led to a
division in the ranks of the left, or, at least, what passes for the left these
days. Prominent liberals, led by Greenwald, are breaking with the Obama cult,
and the Regimists are frantic: their base is badly split.

The libertarian uprising feared by the neocons and their liberal first cousins,
if it does come about, is going to have a significant "left" component.
Dan Senor thinks the danger of such an event occurring has passed because no
one in Washington but Rand Paul has shown the slightest sympathy for Snowden
and his cause. He believes this because the neocons are elitists who only care about what goes on in the circles of power – outside of Washington and New York, they
think, the rest of the country is largely irrelevant.

Senor’s political radar is out of joint. Out here in the cornfields, far from
the power centers of DC and Manhattan, the natives are getting restless. The
fast deteriorating economic situation, combined with fresh revelations about
the systematic violation of our liberties coming out in the Guardian
every week, is preparing the ground for a populist movement against the Leviathan
State, one that has its roots not only in libertarianism but also in the traditional
left-liberal commitment to civil liberties. Percolating at the grassroots level,
and growing in numbers and in energy, this movement is crying out for political
leadership – a role Rand Paul is preparing to play.

While warning Snowden to stay away from governments perceived to be enemies
of the US, Paul has praised the young whistleblower’s cause: the junior Senator from Kentucky’s principled stance, and the movement that is coalescing around his much-anticipated presidential
bid, paves the way for a libertarian uprising that will smash the authoritarian
"center" and give us a new politics in which "left" and
"right" are antediluvian terms that no longer describe the real ideological
parameters of the national discourse. The old framework of Red-State vs. Blue-State
is about to be discarded, and in its place a new paradigm is arising, pitting
authoritarians against constitutionalists, statists against civil libertarians.

Up until now, American liberals – with some notable and admirable exceptions
– have been content to acquiesce in support of our bipartisan foreign policy
of global intervention: what they got in exchange for this was conservative
support for at least the basic underpinnings of the welfare state. Now they
are faced with the prospect of having to add to the bargain the abandonment
of their traditional support for civil liberties. A significant number of them
will reject this deal with the Devil and choose to take the road of principle
– and this presents a problem for the Regimists in the Democratic party, who
are already fighting off an open rebellion in their ranks.

The times, sang Bob Dylan in earlier era of political and social tumult, they
are a changin’! Yes, the forces of repression are on the march, but so too is
the resistance. Gathering out here in the hinterlands, a new coalition is being
forged, one that has the potential to take back this country from a political class
drunk with power. Before this fight is over, we are going to see the viciousness
and reflexively coercive instincts of the Regimists come out in all their ugliness,
so steel yourself for the worst, hope for the best – and don’t lose your nerve.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here.
But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often
made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here
is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the
American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction
by Prof. George
W. Carey, a Foreword
by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott
Richert and David
Gordon (ISI
Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus
Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

201231344461 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Fjustin%2F2013%2F06%2F25%2Fblue-state-fascism%2FBlue+State+Fascism2013-06-26+06%3A00%3A34Justin+Raimondohttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012313444 to “Blue State Fascism”

Another genuine Tour D'Force by Raimondo ……As the Snowdon revelations are cutting through political alliances and assumptions like a red hot knife does butter…….. even as we sleep…….. Are the "O" regimists using the dirt they sweep up to blackmail and intimidate legislators, judges and steal elections??? Silence critics, extort fealty and shut down the loyal opposition??? Perhaps Roberts voted for Obamacare because of some such consideration….. They have been playing with fire. Let's see who gets burnt…………

Impact our politics.., the police states is life and well operating from several directions, drone, phone taping.., look at your passport.., there is a chips tells your government where you are where you have been. Then there is surveillance of all kind.., these kind of control is a total social control and can be described only as Neo Fascism.., off course the corporate bought media, journalists helping the way they can for government to establish what is a Neo Fascism, by reporting the falsified version of a truth.

Clearly the US needs some catalyst like Brazil has a recently. And what a more delightful and ironic spark that led the people to protest corruption in the land of soccer, than the soccer world championship. I really thought that messing with the Internet would get the government in trouble. SOPA, CISPA and the rest. Or perhaps the rigging of finances and the economy, since Americans have a religious belief in the blind justice of the holy sacrosanct market, but is turns out that too is manipulated all around so that the mobsters can make trillions at the expense of everyone else. But apparently American's are willing to give up everything for the corrupt elites.

Aside from hoping for an presidential electoral solution, Americans and the the rest of the world clearly have to express their discontent about the government's action in all possible ways. I was gladly surprised to see my browser's homepage had a little note regarding signing a letter to Congress. Perhaps it's something worth looking into and promoting. stopwatching.us

So now we know the purpose of the NSA Machine in Utah. It's going to store the electronic dossiers of all American's, for future use by tyrants, their corporate friends and I'm sure our israeli soullmates who'll have embedded analysts on site to obtain people's antisemitism profile.

"But Snowden only had the job for three months, meaning he would have gotten the job let’s say in May." That is really dumb. I've heard of pundits who have to take their shoes off to count over ten, but it is new to find one who gets lost on one hand before reaching the thumb.

Three months can be seen as wide a range as anything over 2 or under 4. In calendar terms that means a maximum range of 9 to 16 weeks. As the story broke a couple of weeks ago, Snowden could have gotten the job as early as mid February but no later than early April. :"Lets say in May?" The guy can't count. He is trying to fabricate a timeline to enable a slander.

The 'terrorists' simply refuse to "go" as commanded, so Obama really has no 'choice' in the matter.

“But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act….That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks.

…

“Those are the battles that we willingly join – the battles against ignorance and intolerance, corruption and greed.

“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and, more profoundly, our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are…Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.”

Sorry Justin, your country is going down the tubes and short of a spring like the Arab ones, it is hopeless. This time, the spring should be directed at the 4th estate in no small part. Propagandists and lobbyers for special interest groups are not journalists.

But that chip In your passport is for your OWN GOOD. If you should be kidnapped by a terrorist–and the chances of that are very high, at least one in sixty trillion–your benign government can send a drone and kill your captors. Well, maybe you as well, but you'd be giving up your life for our corporation–uh, country and what higher calling is there?

john g's statement above is mindless, a real betrayal of a genuine Left view of the world. Justin did not propose a libertarian/left alliance on all things. There is genuine disagreement on things like Single Payer, enhanced social security, a shorter work week, etc.
What Justin IS suggesting is an alliance of those who are Left, Liberal, Libertarian and traditional Conservatives for the sake of battling the US Empire and restoring our civil liberties. For this all important cause we must leave our differences at the door. If the US Empire continues on its rampage, it will continue to wreak untold death and destruction on the developing world. Does not the Left need to do all it can to save those lives? And if that is not enough, let us on the Left consider the matter of a World War to which the US Empire is now surely leading us.
But I am afraid that the smug john g's of the world cannot see this. Too bad. It means that the suffering will be even greater before it is all over.

Justin,
It is cold comfort for me, to see that the "liberals" can be just as fascist as the "conservatives".
I hate to become a bore on this – but the Left is not the Democratic Party. The Left is, now, Occupy Wall Street, and other ground roots movements. The Democrats and the Republicans are the two faces of the same elite bastards wanting to subjugate everyone for their own gain.
And, the Libertarians, alas, have chosen to carry water for the Republicans

Blue State Fascism is here to stay, and will expand. Deflationary economic conditions favor the election of Democrats, so the divided government we currently have will be going away as soon as the Bernanke Bubble collapses. When true depressionary conditions return, the voters will chuck the Republicans out of office, and the Democrats will be free to indulge their worst authoritarian fantasies. No one will be able to stop them. When voters are hungry and homeless, or face the imminent prospect of destitution, they vote to be taken care of by the Government.

I also expect Obama to get more aggressive before the economy implodes. When his buttons are pushed he always strikes back hard. Expect Snowden to board a plane and for Obama to order that plane shot down. Expect Rosen, Greenwald, and other journalists who aided and abetted leaks to be prosecuted. Obama doesn't mess around when his power is at stake.

It would almost, almost, be worth it to see these idiots complete the police state they so much want to build, and then watch them be devoured by it. They are attempting to create a monster, one that no one will be able to control. They smugly think only other people will fall into its clutches. One of Snowdens main points was that anyone can be spied on. Anyone. No exceptions. Maybe some of them should read up on past creators of police states and see what happened to a lot of the creators!

both the left and the right are useless, constitution hating, bill of rights trampling vile corporate pigs. both "sides", which is like the left and right cheek of my backside have defiled our constitution as much as they can. the left calls the 2nd amendment "irrelevant", the right has yet to find a part of due process that they support. bush and co. trashed the constitution and now I have to suffer these bleating right wing sheep saying 'Obama hates America durp dee durp dee durp!!". where were you jag offs between the years 2000-08?!? credibility of "conservatives" is less than zero. ditto their "liberal" counter parts advocating for humanitarian war and not seeing the obvious oxymoron of that term. as for the neocons, why not just put on your arm bands and at least be honest with yourselves and everyone else.

there's only liberty or death people. wake up from the hypnosis your masters have put you under.

Rather than fascism we might call it the Tyranny of the majority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_major… Many people believe that the 17th caused to much democracy and destroyed the power of the states or the balance of power needed for a heathy republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendmen…
Long term libertarian changes will need to take a close look at posibly reforming or repealing the 17th so that the states can have more say in laws developed by congress, federal spending and taxation.

Just watch the entire Neocon/Israeli Lobby line-up – from David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell, and Tom Friedman, to William Kristol and William Woolsey, and Senators Feinstein, McCain, and Chuck Schumer – ALL LINED UP and defending America as a Police State, surveilled by not only the NSA but by Israel herself.

The next shoe to drop is public revelation of what is already known about Israeli spying on the American population – both independently and in contract with the NSA

The explosive growth of the US Surveillance State was necessary, after 9-11, in order to continue the SAME Neocon/Israeli Lobby-dictated American foreign policies that brought the BLOWBACK against such policies that were the 9-11 attacks in the first place.

The US had the choice to change course or continue the SAME course of increasingly dangerous and radical Neocon policies (like the Iraq war they immediately lied us into), which were all about propping up Israeli Apartheid and has NOTHING to do with security for America

We have watched the Neocons/Israeli Lobby push us ever deeper into the Surveillance State we see today as necessary to try to avert FURTHER blowback from CONTINUING these Neocon/Israeli Lobby-bought policies

We are a quasi-police state now, from full spectrum NSA spying to TSA frisking, so we can CONTINUE our AIPAC-bought foreign policies and try to protect ourselves from the BLOWBACK from these policies.

Instead of going 'all in' for the Surveillance State that the Neocons/Israeli Lobby was pushing on the US – America should have ENDED the AIPAC-bought foreign policy that brought such disasters to America such as 9-11 and the Iraq War (a Neocon lie), and the Syrian War and Iran War that the Neocons and Israel are trying to lie us into presently.

Enough. No more American police state in order to enable further destabilizing Israeli/Neocon-policies – like wars on Iran and Syria

It's pitiful that the Party faithful from either side of the two faced monopoly, make their judgment of the correctness of any policy based on which Party the occupant of the White House represents. It's like Madeline Albright (I believe it was) who upon the Air Force flyover during Bill Clinton's iniital inauguration said, "It's our Air Force now!" Suddenly the military was "good" again!

Occupy Wall St. is dead. It had no organization, program, no philosophy, no structure and no tactics. I was there in Boston and it did not even take an antiwar position. It was pathetic. And now it is dead in case you had not noticed. All we have is our organization and our brains – and to abandon organization and program to our rulers and not even challenge them on the war is to dispose of the infant with the water of the bath. I noted that the Obamabots moved in early used the slogans and good intentions to offset the Tea Party and then let Occupy die.
The American pwogwessives have little relationship to the genuine Left of yore. By and large they have flocked to Obama and the PDA. And by and large they were very antiwar when Bush was around but became much more tolerant of wars when Obama took over. The libertarians in contrast have been consistently antiwar under Clinton, under Bush and under Obama.

Justin's expose is great.
Blue state fascism is a reality – and most pwogwessive will come running back to the next Obama.
Hillary will be lauded as the first woman president – maybe the first woman to start a world war – using the mindless identity politics of the pwogs. Of course it will be a "humanitarian" war – as in Libya.

Tyranny of the majority, yea that's the problem we're suffering from. We dont' even know what our government is doing, it's literally all secret, and yet it's the majority to blame. The majority may or may not also be terrible but the majority unless they engage in direct action protest have no bearing on this pseudo democracy.

Where are the mass demonstrations? We still have fascism with a smile. They haven't come for the American people yet. The economy is still limping along. The US government has not had to restore order in 21st century America. They will use the NSA to find rabble rousers, use banks to strip them of their wealth, and use drones to end their life and the lives of their associates (guilt by association via facebook). Then the US military will act like they were British redcoats in colonial America. The red and blue fascist are royalist and they use technology in order to conduct their modern inquisition.

Chalmers Johnson was right. Leave if you can. If what Snowden provides doesn't change minds then the US will probably never change course. We have had several whistleblowers and nothing has changed. Europeans came to America for a better life and freedom. I think it is about time to follow their example and vote with ones feet.

John: Well of course it will be a humanitarian war! Our owners only send men to kill bad guys and save the innocent. You should not be so cynical days before the fourth. I will write to Hillary and ask her to pray for your attitude at the National Cathedral. She must still have Bill's giant stage-prop Bible to inspire her.

There's nothing smug about realising that you'll never get the left to help elect a Rand (or Ron) Paul. From the left's pov you can't solve the problem of extreme capitalism with even more extreme capitalism AND social/economic Darwinism.

John V. Walsh,
I am sure that you are right in your comments; I only attach myself onto the Left as it seems that the Occupy Wall Street (ers), etc are the only groups moving forwards at this time. The TEA Party and the Libertarians are being reactionary – wanting to redeem capitalism from being the old tricked-up whore that she is now , back to being a virgin maid. Too late – capitalism with its kleptocracy and cronyism is now like the aristocracy and feudal state in Europe before the French Revolution. Sure the Revolution was bloody, but it also slammed the door shut on the feudal system and the aristocracy and led to the Modern.
Too bad, libertarians don't listen to Thomas Jefferson (who they supposedly adore) and his comments regarding occasional revolution.

Blue State Fascism? Hahahhahaaa. Seems like Bush's Dictator comment has gone down the memory hole. If you statement is true, everything will be alright once the Republicans get back into power. If not, the NRA will be along anytime now to restore the Constitution. Then there are all to actual calls for impeacment (0) from the opposition.

The US has had creeping Fascism enabled by 911. The Red/Blue thing is a classic divide and conquer and conquer by the oligarchs to keep people under their thumb.

US of Amerika is one of those regimes disrespecting its own rules and international laws regarding human socials laws.., again and a again accusing all and every other nations for not respecting human rights while over 2million innocent people are withheld in prisons for companies running the system making money.., while USA supporting terrorism in Syria, while USA is at wars with all and every nations accept true tyrants and other form of dictatorial regimes for last 60 years. Obama is yet another entity of vulture capitalism that wants these wars to continue, without these wars the us militarism wont survive.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
—The History of Freedom in Antiquity, 1877

There might also be a bit of professional jealousy coming into play regarding O'Donnell and Gregory over Greenwald in the sense that Greenwald is a journalist who can actually write rather than specialize in makeup and hair combing.

The U.S. Department of 'Defense' consumes more oil than the entire country of Switzerland. The DOD has not shrunk, but grown under the Obama administration. So-called 'progressives' have been apparently powerless to hold back the growth of the U.S. empire. Yet they have managed, in the cause of curbing energy consumption by the plebeian, to ban incandescent light bulbs.

I managed to catch an episode of Ken Burns' documentary "Prohibition." He described the fact that the Yankee Protestants were using the public schools as a platform to promote their temperance movement. I had to laugh because I knew he was deliberately skipping over what was for him an uncomfortable historic fact. The Protestants did not merely leverage the public schools, they were behind their creation in the first place out of fear the children of the immigrants were getting educated in Catholic schools. It had nothing to do with insuring access to education and everything to do with political control over what it was children were taught.

The single largest and most blatant example of the extreme political privilege enjoyed by crony-capitalists is the ability of central banks to create money out of nothing—mainly to finance war, yet too many self-described progressives don't merely ignore this privilege, they go out of their way to defend it.

The Blue-Red chorus of denunciations of Snowden are simply expressions of loyalty to the state, namely the one located in D.C., and the power and privilege that comes with attachment to said state. This should hardly be surprising given that we are talking about the most powerful state in world history. Of course, all the Assange, Manning and Snowden bashers agree that anything less than total loyalty to the government line on these three Goldsteins for our time amounts to "treason". That also means that reporting on the Three Goldsteins in a way that is not favorable to the party line, a la Glenn Greenwald, could land you in trouble with Big Brother.

If not being with the Assange, Manning and Snowden bashers makes me a "traitor", then so be it. I'm a "traitor".

Why should the left ally with you Koch-funded libertarian castoffs from the GOP?

The only reason you guys even need "allies" is because your astroturf movement is utterly lacking in credibility. Seriously, you would get everything from such an alliance and the left would get nothing. No thanks.

Let's make it simple: Do you believe that the exclusive authority of the central bank to create money out of nothing is a good thing? Do you believe that this privilege has anything to do with free-market capitalism?

You're asking the wrong question.
It is the system we have, so "belief" doesn't come into it. The government is the sole issuer of narrow money, so that is the currency we use. I'm OK with that part of it.

But the private banks get in between us and the government and issue bank credit (debt to bankers) as the money we are forced to use.

We need more democracy, not less government and more capitalist power. We actually have a good currency system but it is misunderstood and misused.

Yaa mojo……… "The source of these chips energy is not oil based."……….. but what bearing does the chips intended energy source have…?????? What the "dryin" does, is to given the little critter 1000s or 10s of 1000s of times more energy than it was designed to tolerate. WTF does oil have to do with with this…….anyway…….. What are you smoking….???
Or are you a disinfo troll ……………. ??????

Sooner than later this cleptocratic house of cards will come crashing down …………… and the fiat debt based dollar will die…….. Out of the deadly chaos will rise new local, national currencies…….. States will not be able to afford Washington's profligacy…. and imperial dreams ……. They will need every bit of their own assets to feed the angry mobs and keep them from taking every coper wire they can see…… every lightpole……. anything worth anything……States will NOT be sending MONEY to WASHINGTON……….Without the states sending Washington 3-TRILLION per YEAR………..It's just a ghetto…… Empire ends…… No need to secede………….

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].